In health care settings, tracking of patients, patient services, medications, and other items or services can provide both better immediate management of patient care and better long-term management as tracking reports are evaluated to determine where problem areas exist. In healthcare delivery systems, patient flow can be critical, both to the individual patient and to the overall patient population. For example, management of a patient in labor involves various key data and decision points over the course of labor that guide the physician, midwife or nurse in their scope of clinical decision making. These key data points are difficult to track for each patient in a clear and concise fashion over the length of labor. Keeping track of up to the moment data as a clinician moves between multiple laboring patients may be difficult.
There is a significant opportunity for improvement in tracking patient conditions and health services over the course of patient care. The various transactions involved with a patient admitted to a hospital related to treatment, diagnosis and recovery are currently unmanaged and poorly integrated and coordinated. The looseness of this process results in errors, omissions, missing information, duplication, re-work, inefficiency, sub-optimal quality, poor service, and high cost to the patient and health care provider.